9 comments

The detective/noir illustrations are great. I teach detective ficiton quite often, and I've been thinking about including a look at magazine illustration, as well as book jacket covers in the course.

Do you have access to some giant archive of Saturday Evening Posts? I've been remembering some of the striking Post illustrations I saw as a kid via my grandparent's Post subscription.

In particular, I remember the page and half illustration for some short story about ghosts...the premise was that a teenage couple dare each other into sneaking into an abandoned ballroom where legend tells of two lovers killing themselves on the dance floor, leaving a bloody X...

That is a cool Jones illustration. Although is it just me, or does the still life set up to the left of the figures seem inordinately large? At any rate, I'm always impressed by Jones -- such a versatile illustrator. He never got pigeonholed into doing only cute animal imagery, & his glamour work was about as good as any one else at the Cooper Studio.

Bingham -- My god, what a great designer! His spots are so impactful, so well executed. He seems to have thrived on the limitations of space & the use of one color.

On Bingham - agreed - I think of Bingham as a designer as much as an illustrator. His shapes and compositions are all about construction, if you know what I mean, whereas some illustrators use a more "organic" approach.

Bingahm is first rate, Leif, and I am really enjoying this series. That image of the man jumping to the dock is one I have admired for a while, but I never knew who did it. I put it on my blog some time ago as the work of a great unsung artist. Now that you have educated me,I will need to go back and correct it!

Like Professor Estevez, I have long been haunted by memories of illustrations I saw when I was young. Since you are performing this wonderful finder service, I have a list of about 25 images to describe to you.